Don’t expect to see scenes like this games resume
I don’t think anyone on the planet will convince me that the planed German return to Bundesliga action should be replicated in the Premier League.
For weeks we have been hearing about the integrity of the league being compromised by nulling and voiding the season.
But the restrictions under which the Germans plan to complete the Bundesliga hardly fulfill the requirements of ensuring a satisfactory end to the season.
Among the restrictions placed on clubs are for example
- Contact training should be minimised with team meetings held in big rooms and only for ‘compelling reasons’, with players keeping two metres apart. No eating will be allowed in the kitchen and food must be taken away.
- Starting line-ups and subs should change in different facilities and warm up separately. Their time spent in the dressing-room will be kept to a minimum with two-metre social distancing imposed and players will shower individually.
- Substitutes on the bench are also set to sit two or three seats apart with some seated up in the stands if needed.
- Teams should either have their own hotel or have their own floor, with their own entrance and elevator, to avoid contact with other hotel visitors and maintaining two-metre distancing between each other
That just a random selection of what faces players whose minds should be entirely concentrated on the game ahead. Instead they will be expected to play fiercely competitive games whilst having to cope with the worries and anxirty presented by the pandemic.
And what happens for example if one or two of the most important players in a team test positive whilst the opposition remain free to field their best team.
And what about the less fearless players – every team has them – who will be very cautious about getting into the kind of ‘contact’ tackles which are necessary.
Sorry, I want my football back but none of this works for me and it is absolutely no way to gives the game back the legitimacy some very pompous people are demanding must happen.
But it’s not about that really of course. As has been said many time – it’s about dough, the whole dough and nothing but the dough!
These rules simply rob the game of legitimacy!
I agree with you Hugh 👍
Football is a contact sport which is at Complete odds with what is going on right now including social distancing rules. The IDIOTS that cobbled this nonsense together need shooting…… and the MAJOR part they have missed, is that footballers are “Human Beings” who have the same concerns as the rest of us, families (including elderly) and loved ones….
This is ALL about money!
Do away with the business men running football, sky and globalisation it has done nothing to improve football as a spectator sport, it may have improved televisation of the games but what happens on the pitch… take me back to my childhood, the 70’s and 80’s where games were less predictable and just as entertaining if not more so. Time for a reset when it’s safe to return give us our game back !!!
Absolutely agree The Cat! Footballers are human like us, and share our fears and concerns, they have a right to refuse to be exposed to any risks in order for their clubs to hang on to their pots of gold. As a group they should say “NO. We’re not doing it.” End of!!